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"Oh!You Pretty Things" is a song
written by David Bowie in 1971 for the
album Hunky Dory. It opens with
only Rick Wakeman's piano and Bowie's
vocal, before entering the catchy refrain. The simple piano style
is often compared to Paul McCartney's
"Martha My Dear". Thematically, the
song has been seen as reflecting the influence of occultistAleister
Crowley and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and heralding "the
impending obsolescence of the human race in favour of an alliance
between arriving aliens and the youth of the present
society".

The song was first released by Peter
Noone of Herman's Hermits, in a
single on which Bowie played piano. It became a #12 hit in
mid-1971. Noone replaced Bowie's line "The Earth is a bitch" with
"The Earth is a beast", in a performance that NME editors Roy Carr and
Charles Shaar Murray called
"one of rock and roll's most
outstanding examples of a singer failing to achieve any degree of
empathy whatsoever with the mood and content of a lyric".

Live versions

Bowie played the song at the BBC show
Johnny Walker Lunchtime Show on May
221972. This was broadcast in early June the same
year and in 2000 was released on the album Bowie at the Beeb; it was also issued
as a promo single in France in
2000.

Other releases

It was also recorded for a whistle test on the BBC, but
released over 10 years later. An outtake, in which Bowie stumbles
over the lines and gets them wrong on several occasions, is hidden
on the Best of Bowie DVD.